


Watch Our Worlds Collide

by Bearlyy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Era (Phandom), Dan Howell/Phil Lester Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Multiple Universes Colliding, Pining, Romance, idk man this shit is eXTRA, they're in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 05:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14635347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bearlyy/pseuds/Bearlyy
Summary: Dan wants Phil to know that he would've fallen in love with him no matter what, or where, or how. Phil already knows.





	Watch Our Worlds Collide

It could have happened anywhere. Dan said it once, whispering into Phil’s dark hair amidst a darker night. “I would have fallen in love with you anyway, you know.” Phil glanced up, catching Dan’s haltering smile with his lips, looking into his favorite brown eyes. “I know,” Phil murmured. “I know you would’ve. I’m quite irresistible.”  
Dan snorted, raising himself up above Phil, bringing his hands to cup Phil’s face and looked at the man he’d fallen in love with, the man he would’ve fallen in love with no matter the circumstance.

Then he pushed himself off Phil, arched his back like a cat’s, and watched Phil gaze in amazement at him. “Are you leaving?” he asked in a small voice. Too small to come out of a mouth that could smile like Phil’s. Dan just grinned, got back into bed, and curled up in Phil’s open arms. “Not after a confession like that, no. I assumed I would just wait until morning and then sneak out. I prefer my walks of shame to be documented in the sunlight, obvi-”

He was cut off as Phil kissed him, which was a blessing for everyone involved. Dan tends to get a bit stuck on his internet persona sometimes and goes off on rants like this. Someone’s got to keep him in check, and Dan knows he’s lucky that someone is Phil.

When Dan walks up to Phil’s hand brushing his cheek and a solid three minutes he spends solely on looking at Phil’s sleepy face, he’s happy.

When Phil wakes, looks disjointedly at Dan for a moment, and murmurs “weirdo” affectionately into his pillow, Dan is happy.

When they continue like this, Capital-T-Together, Dan is happy.

When they do the book and the tour, Dan is fucking thrilled. When they start showing their off-camera selves, when videos start including Dan's messy hair and Phil's cursing, Dan is near ecstatic.

  
And when Phil brings home a shelter dog and excuses- “He just looked right, Dan, I couldn’t leave him there!”- Dan realizes that maybe happy isn’t the right word.  
Happy hasn’t been the right word since the first Skype call.  
Wasn’t a big enough word to explain how he’d felt on the Manchester Eye.

Happy didn’t begin to cover the flood of emotion Dan experienced when Phil got on one knee and pulled out a ring, said something about wanting to spend the rest of their lives together- None of this was simply happy, this was bits of the universe in Dan’s palms. This was swimming in Phil’s ocean eyes. This was stars imploding in Dan’s heart whenever he realized that he fucking _exists_ , that he met Phil, that _this_ is as good as it gets.

Because of course there are other timelines. Dan and Phil have met a billion times. They’ve fought and fucked and made a place for the two of them in every universe.

There’s another Dan and Phil that called it what it was from the beginning A universe where when Dan had kissed him on the Manchester Eye Phil hadn’t been afraid.  
One where they’d made out on his bedroom floor after the first pinof. One where they’d put their arms around each other and held hands and called it what it was from the moment it was. Was that world this one? 

There’s a universe where they don’t realize they love one another until they’re 40 and married to other people. And that is only one story in one plane of existence reflected in a billion pairs of blue and brown eyes. And it's not destiny or the miracle of the deep, it's chance and probability and the way Dan still looks at Phil like he doesn't know what to do with him.   
There’s a universe where this happens:

  
*  
Cosmos move, Planets align, the Earth spins, and yet again, Dan and Phil meet.  
This time, it starts with an almost empty library and a very anxious Phil Lester.

 Phil is anxious because his coffee is about to spill on him and it’s entirely too hot. It’s not the only thing that should have a heat warning in this library. There’s another boy here, browsing the children's section like it’s his living room. Phil puts down his coffee and readjusts in his chair to gaze at the boy more entirely. He’s probably about Phil’s age, a bit shorter, and his hair is far too cool to even compare. He’s running a finger along the spines of the books, eyes searching for something.

Phil keeps looking at him. This boy is the main character, because of course he is. He’s the one who solves the mystery or finds the key or leads the uprising. And he’s also looking right back at Phil, and it’s the type of look that gets written down. Phil notes that his eyes are the prettiest shade of brown, and suddenly, he knows that this is the start of something big.

The boy walks over, holds out his hand and says, “Hello, I’m Dan.”  
Breathless, Phil says “Oh, uh, I’m Phil Lester. Nice to meet you.”  
Dan smiles, and Phil feels his heart drop out of his chest.  
This is the start of something Phil doesn’t want to miss.

*  
Dan and Phil figure it out, they always do. There are versions of Dan and Phil that don’t know how to fix the broken parts of themselves until it’s too late. In some worlds, they only love each other for a bit and go about the rest of their lives remembering a boy who changed them.

There’s a world where this happens:

  
*  
Dan walked into the kitchen and saw Phil making pancakes on the stove, flipping them with the concentration of someone doing something far more important. He had his tongue between his teeth and was wearing Dan’s jumper again.  
He looked beautiful, he always did. He looked like the rest of Dan’s life, he always had.  
It just took Dan time to be able to admit it.  
He was finally ready. “Breakfast is almost done,” Phil said as he flipped the last pancake onto a plate.  
“I’m in love with you,” Dan said. The words were so simple, but they were vast enough to drown in. In them was years of waiting. There was practically dust hanging on the letters. This was long overdue.  
Phil dropped the spatula and turned toward Dan. “What did you say?”  
Dan swallowed and repeated what he said before, perfectly aware that this might ruin everything.  
“I’m in love with you, Phil. Since the beginning, maybe. And I’ve spent too long waiting, I’ve spent years waiting,” Dan paused and glanced away from Phil’s eyes, they were almost too much to bear, “I don’t care if this messes everything up because you are my everything and I lov-”  
“Why did you wait?”  
Phil stepped toward Dan, grabbed hold of his sleeve and laughed like everything mattered. “Why did we wait so long, Dan?” Dan shook his head, and said honestly “ I don’t know.”  
Then Phil brought their mouths together, and nothing mattered but them. It was 2009 again and nothing mattered except this story of Dan and Phil. Dan wound his fingers through Phil’s hair and wondered, briefly, why they’d wasted so long not doing this. But he let these thoughts go, allowed Phil to wash away the tension and pain with his perfect eyes, with his large and gentle hands. They had so many years to make up for.  
*

  
Dan still hasn’t found the right word for what Phil does to him.

Once, when Phil had made him walk in the snow with promises of hot chocolate upon return, Dan had watched Phil gleefully make a snowman and said, “I want to watch our worlds collide until I know the lines by heart.” Phil turned around, thoughtfully glanced at the snow all around them and responded, “I don’t know about that. I like that we fall in love a bit differently every day, don’t you, Dan?”

Dan knew he was right. They’d fallen in love in so many ways, in so many stories.  
They have infinite chances to get this right.  
In every story, they can fall in love, if only given the right words.  
And in all the stories so far, they have.

**Author's Note:**

> wow ok hi follow me on twitter  
> https://twitter.com/honeybearly  
> leave a comment or something, i live for that shit  
> I wrote this in like 20 minutes oops


End file.
